Ishant's bane

Written by Sreeram Ramachandran

Friday, 15 February 2008

Ishant Sharma has emerged as a promising new bowler who can run through batting line ups and make batsmen want to literally hit him, since they can't seem to be able to hit his bowling. But that is just the first step, and the bigger challenge is only just coming up.

Laxman Sivaramakrishnan, Narendra Hirwani, Mohammad Sami and co. stare at Ishant from the deeper end of the cliff on whose edge he now stands. In fact running through the sheer number of promising bowlers who have fallen by the wayside is almost as depressing as the fact that Agarkar and Brad Hogg have actually made it through.

The history of cricket in the subcontinent is replete with bowlers who have flattered to deceive. Hirwani took 16 wickets in his debut Test in 1987/88, eight in each innings. He followed it up with 20 wickets in three tests. Of course, there was only way to go from there and that was down, but Hirwani took to that road with a vengeance and continued plummeting till he found himself short of a national team to represent. He then became a surprise selection for the 2001 series against Australia at home, but that ended with everyone acknowledging that the selectors did, in fact, have a sense of humour. After a Harbhajan-dominated series, Hirwani left the international scene with a tirade against captain Ganguly for not playing him enough. But with the amount of general criticism Ganguly gets at any given point of time, even that went largely unnoticed.

Sivaramakrishnan made his debut in 85/86 surrounded by a bucketful of wickets and good natured jokes about the length of his surname, but his next notable achievement was in 1998 bowling to Tendulkar in the nets to help him face Warne. Ashish Nehra was the next big thing until someone realized he was made of glass, following which he went to become a dangerous fast bowler because he broke more of his own bones than that of the opposing batsmen.

A plethora of potential pitfalls await Ishant. The sudden surge of superstardom is a lurking, hovering vulture which has picked on many fledgling careers. The flashbulbs blinded Yuvraj when he first started his blaze of glory. The headiness of a country fawning over you and the resultant wild partying led to a hangover which took some time off from international cricket and a career-cum-match saving 98 against Sri Lanka to shake out off. In the long run, it is perhaps a good thing that stick insects don't make for great product endorsers, and there are only so many brands who would want to associate with a giant Adam’s apple. His agents will try their best to not let this happen, but it is unlikely that excess money flow will be a possible trigger for an Ishant decline (excess being the operative word).

Injury is the bigger and more realistic worry. With international cricketing calenders as packed as they are, and with cricket administrators looking to milk the game even further, twisted ankles, stress factures, muscle strains are always around the corner. Frequent injuries have broken the rhythms of many careers and left the cricketing world with only imagined portraits of the full potential of Chris Cairns, Shane Bond and several others.

India's cricketing calendar in the next few months is typically cramped with high-intensity contests coming up. It can make the fittest of bowlers check up on their medical insurance, and Ishant's physique is one that doesn't exactly leave you brimming with assurance. Of course, there might be some hidden resilience and strength behind the matchstick frame but the point is, it will be prudent to exercise caution and use the rotation policy generously. Meaningless matches could be used as breaks, and the good thing about the current international calendar is that it is never really difficult to come across one of those.

But one suspects all of that will only help in reducing injuries and not preventing them. Possibly, the first point they teach young fast bowlers these days when it comes to mental training is 'be mentally prepared for injuries, take it as a bonus if they don't come'. Neither the joke nor the idea is funny, but perhaps it would be a good idea for Ishant to be prepared for uninvited breaks, so he can spend more time working on regaining his momentum and rhythm and less on fretting and fuming when the inevitable bandages come.

Of course, given the nature of games coming up he wouldn't really mind spending some time off the field, not playing. A good portion of the matches coming up will be played in India.Ishant's great strengths have broadly been line, length, bounce and movement (which, basically, could also be clubbed under the term 'everything').

No one can take his line and discipline away from him, but going by the tracks that have been laid out for the past few test matches in India, he will have to replace the rest of his armoury with intangibles like 'a big heart', 'patience', 'discipline', 'spirit' and so on. He will still get bounce on account of his height, but here that only means instead of smothering the ball off their shins, the batsmen will have to murder it off their knees.

There are two known ways, leaving aside the one that leads to oblivion, which an international fast bowler who has arrived with a big splash can take. There is the Shoaib Akhtar way, where you take your career along paths chartered by a 'Snakes and Ladders' game. You spend most of your time upsetting and dissing people off, and occasionally take time out to give your sheer natural talent a rip, just so as to remind people that you are still worth fussing about.

Or you could do a Brett Lee, who started off in a way that draws a striking parallel with that of Shoaib Akhtar. Here you take the unfashionable (which usually directly implies rewarding) way out by actually working on your shortcomings and coming out a better player. Shoaib looks 33 physically, but mentally one suspects he is still at 21, with Lee filling in the vice versa slot.

A lot of that has also been influenced by the administration that is governing the players. Lee has had the benefit of having strong captains and a professional management to back him, while Akhtar has been left with an administration whose tardiness actually makes Shoaib look good in comparison. The disconcerting part about all this is Ishant's future and growth may not even be entirely in his own hands.

In any case, here's hoping he fights the odds and continues to prosper at the international stage. That's a curious way to end a piece that has dragged attention away from the silver lining and onto the dark cloud, but, umm, there it is.

(Click here to know more about Sreeram)

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